State Probes Tactics At Southern Bell

November 29, 1990|By Adam Yeomans, Sentinel Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE — The Public Service Commission said Wednesday it is investigating a sales scam at Southern Bell Telephone Co. that lasted more than two years and has prompted the utility to fire five employees and refund $600,000 to customers.

PSC Chairman Michael Wilson said he wanted to ensure that the state's largest phone company has resolved its internal problems, and he has asked the commission's staff to recommend whether the agency needs to take action against the company.

''Clearly, we've got to put a stop to that type of behavior,'' Wilson said.

Last week, the company disclosed that it had fired five employees in Orlando and West Palm Beach for signing up customers for services without their knowledge. The company will repay 40,000 customers about $600,000 in December, with refunds ranging from $7 to $35.

''The addition of any service without a customer's permission was clearly wrong and will not be tolerated,'' company spokesman Spero Canton said in a statement.

Southern Bell would not identify the fired employees, including three sales representatives and two supervisors.

The company's 5-month-old internal probe is continuing and has not revealed similar actions elsewhere in Florida, Canton said Wednesday.

Southern Bell is not pursuing criminal charges against the fired employees, three of whom worked in Orlando. Canton said the U.S. attorney's office in Tampa and the Florida attorney general's office have been informed of the incident.

The sales scam started in Orlando in 1988 and went undetected until last summer when a customer in Brooksville in Hernando County complained about being charged for an unrequested service. Last spring, the company initiated a procedure to verify all sales with customers, Canton said.

Employees who participated in the telemarketing program earned prizes such a video cameras, video recorders and televisions for the services they sold. The company has asked the fired employees to return the prizes, Canton said.

The unauthorized sales stemmed from the company's push to sell its wire maintenance plan to cover wiring inside homes and its trouble isolation plan to determine problems with phone lines.